I want to come to Rep. Kahn's defense a little bit here. To the best of my understanding, what she has said is that the MPRA has this city over a barrel, and that the city is going to have to offer them something in exchange for changes in the pension agreement that would help us get out from under this mountain of debt. If I understand her remarks, she is criticizing Mayor Rybak and the city council for not holding their noses and making the agreement with the MPRA.
Honestly, I have a lot of sympathy both for people being angry that the MPRA is going to have to be bought out, and for people not wanting to have to explain to their constituents why they gave yet more money to MPRA plan participants, so that they profited with bonuses during a market uptick and also had to be bought out when the plan did badly. I can see why the Mayor would think that the plan participants might not be exactly being "team players," but if they have us in a headlock, there may not be much we can do... On the other hand, I think we can also understand Rep. Kahn's position. I don't think it's entirely fair to say that she wants to take away a City Council tool just because she disagrees with it. What she is saying is that it's a desperate measure to pay pension obligations with bonds, since that is paying recurring expenses with non-recurring revenue. Since this is such a fiscally risky maneuver, she is arguing not that the city council should be forbidden from doing it, just that it should be able to do it only with the explicit consent of the voters. There have been a lot of hot words about this on all sides. To the (perhaps limited) extent that we on the list can help, maybe we can talk things through with an eye to a compromise solution and provide citizen cover if the only solution involves doing something unpalatable. -- Robert P. Goldman ECCO [EMAIL PROTECTED] REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[email protected] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
